Category Archives: Social Network

Zynga Hires Team Behind Online Poker Stat Tracker

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Zynga, the social-gaming giant, announced Tuesday that it has acquired the team from MarketZero, a poker services provider.

Zynga, the maker of FarmVille, CityVille and other popular social games, says it only hired the MarketZero staff, though, and it won’t operate or acquire MarketZero’s business. “This acquisition leverages the knowledge and expertise of the team,” Zynga said in a statement.

MarketZero, with its PokerTableRatings, hosts “the largest online portal tracking career statistics of online poker players,” Zynga says. The PokerTableRatings staff wrote in a blog post that members shouldn’t see any difference on the site. “PTR hasn’t skipped a beat and we’re working hard to make sure PTR continues to be the best place to find stats on every online poker player,” PTR says.

In the past year, Zynga has seen tremendous success and growth. It acquired 11 companies from around the world in as many months. And Monday, Zynga announced DreamWorks co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg was joining the social-gaming company’s board of directors.

Zynga is also rumored to be considering an IPO in 2012.

More About: MarketZero, Zynga

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Rhapsody Premieres TV on the Radio’s New Album One Week Early

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Fans of Brooklyn’s TV on the Radio have been waiting for the band’s next disc since 2008, when its last album, Dear Science, dropped. Now Rhapsody subscribers can check out Nine Types of Light before its April 12 release.

Rhapsody isn’t the only outlet to feature the album early — The Guardian is streaming it today, too — but the portability that Rhapsody offers is certainly enticing.

The music subscription service is also offering a ton of editorial content, including videos, the band’s responses to subscriber questions, and other interviews and tidbits.

More and more, bands are releasing music via alternative distribution channels, such as Rhapsody, which has also premiered music from artists like Jack Johnson, The Black Eyed Peas and Zac Brown. Other services, like Spotify (which premiered R.E.M.’s last album, for one), have had similar initiatives, and Facebook has afforded fans early looks at music from the likes of J-Lo and Lil Wayne.

Rhapsody users: Let us know what you think of TV on the Radio‘s efforts in the comments. In the meantime, here’s a single from the disc, courtesy of Soundcloud:

TV On The Radio – “Will Do” by Interscope Records

Image courtesy of Flickr, angela n.

More About: music, rhapsody, tv-on-the-radio

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WordPress Upgrades Security With 3.11 Release

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Self-hosted WordPress users, fire up your update engines because WordPress 3.1.1 is now available.

WordPress 3.1.1 might not bring any new functionality to the popular content management tool, but it does fix a number of bugs and potential security issues.

These are the new changes the WordPress team announced on the official WordPress blog:

  • Some security hardening to media uploads
  • Performance improvements
  • Fixes for IIS6 support
  • Fixes for taxonomy and PATHINFO (/index.php/) permalinks
  • Fixes for various query and taxonomy edge cases that caused some plugin compatibility issues

WordPress 3.1 was released at the end of February and has already been downloaded nearly 4.5 million times.

Users that aren’t experiencing any issues with WordPress 3.1 should still update because the latest version does address three security issues discovered by the WordPress security team.

Users can download by either using the built-in update tool or by going to WordPress.org/download.

More About: WordPress, WordPress 3.1, wordpress 3.1.1

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Devo Drummer Rips Freemium Model to Shreds With $75,000 Offering

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If you’re in a band that lacks a kick-ass drummer (most members of the chillwave persuasion say, “Aye!”), you’re in luck — you can buy Devo’s session drummer for a mere $75,000.

In order to hype his new album, My New Friends, Josh Freese is offering up a stellar package for devoted fans. It includes: 1). Freese’s services as a drummer for one month, 2). One of his drum sets, 3). A Freese-penned, five-song EP written about “you,” 4). The chance to take Shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool’s Lamborgini, 5). 500 copies of My New Friends, 6). A trip to purchase matching outfits at Tommy Bahama’s and “make everybody very sad.”

Less expensive (and rad) packages include the album for $5, a $50 offering that includes a personalized call from the musician, and tons of other packages of varying prices stuffed with gear and interactions with Freese.

This isn’t the first time Freese has offered up a bizarre package of this sort. According to Wired, he marketed his 2009 disc, Since 1972, by offering fans such goodies as a miniature-golf session with drummer and his musician friends. The new disc features songs about fans who ponied up the cash to meet the artist in 2009.

This stunt seems a perfect fit for a musician who has played with Nine Inch Nails (as we all know, Trent Reznor is really into freemium packages) and Devo, who crowdsourced its last album in a highly tongue-in-cheek way.

Wealthier readers: Would you fork over $75,000 to chill with Freese?

Image courtesy of Flickr, colin.brown

More About: devo, freemium, john-freese, MARKETING, money, music

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